


Being Whole

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Identity Issues, M/M, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-05-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of being merged in mind and body, Clark and Bruce find being separate (both mentally and physically) difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Whole

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [合一](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9563039) by [Lynx219](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx219/pseuds/Lynx219)



A man is dreaming in a room filled with rain-streaked light.. He reaches out in his sleep, as if searching for something that isn't there. A frown mars his face as he slips deeper into the dream.

Remembering being whole.

**: : :**

A snap of Mxyzptlk's fingers, a sound that seems to send shock waves through the air, an electrical pulse of energy, and they are one. Quicksilver-bright and velvet-dark, woven together inextricably into an unbroken dappled fabric. A breathless pause, the battle seems to stop around them--around _him_ \--and his thoughts race, struggling to comprehend what he is.

He is joy and sorrow, he is fire and ice, he is passion embodied on both sides. He understands both aspects of himself completely, every thing about himself is known. He sees the world in light and in shadow at once, and understands how they balance each other.

How they complete each other.

 _This is how you are_ , part of him thinks. _This is your spirit, here inside me._

 _Yes,_ he thinks in return.

_It's beautiful._

**: : :**

He wakes up with a start, the blankets tangled around him. He's been seeking something. His hands close on the empty white sheets, crushing them. The rain is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of his heart racing. He turns over his pillow, searching for a cool spot on the heated cloth, and closes his eyes again, yearning for sleep. Yearning for the dream to return.

**: : :**

He moves effortlessly, grace and power combined into a seamless whole that seems to fill his very muscles with exhilaration. And as he moves, as he fights, thoughts and feelings flicker through him like golden fish beneath the placid surface of a pond. Some are no surprise: he is aware of respect, of friendship, of a sense of comradeship that resonates within him. _Ah,_ he thinks. _You too._

 _Of course,_ he answers himself. _Always._

Some, however, are an unexpected revelation.

**: : :**

He wakes again in the dim, eerie grayness of early morning, feeling strange and displaced. Going to the bathroom, he turns on the light--and comes face to face with a stranger.

He startles backwards, drops into a fighting stance before realizing that it is no intruder, but his own face in the mirror. He stares at it, the angles and planes that seem suddenly unfamiliar, alien. He touches his cheekbone, brushes a thumb across his lower lip. Shivers. Remembering.

**: : :**

Chasing a stray thought, an errant impulse, he plunges deeper into his twinned consciousness, everything illuminated before him, no secrets to be held from himself now. With a rush of sheer joy he realizes it all, feels both halves of his soul leap in response as the union between them deepens into something sensual, something more intense than mere sex. It is complete abandon, a total loss of the self in ravishing wonder, two wild rivers mingling into a torrent. He is lost in amazed delight, hardly realizing the battle is over, wanting nothing more than this to go on forever. _Never to be parted, never again,_ his soul sings, _To be together forever, one thought and one bliss, at last!_

When Mxyptlk snaps his fingers again, he is torn apart, reeling back into the isolate he used to be, half a man once more. His spirit aches like a wound where he was ripped asunder, like a phantom limb that he cannot fully accept is gone.

But it is.

**: : :**

He turns from the stranger in the mirror and finds his way back to his bedroom. Going to the window, he stares at the dim reflection in the rain-streaked glass. It is no surprise at all when he sees the other face, now more familiar and more beloved than his own, appear on the other side.

He puts out his hand to touch the glass, sees the motion mirrored perfectly. Their fingers meet, five points of contact against an unyielding barrier. Rain runs down between them, rivulets like tears. Two trickling drops touch, merge: cascading downward with new energy, there is no separating them now.

The window is opened.

There is nothing between them now but their own separateness, and even that feels frayed by the slow sweet tide of desire pulling them together. He wonders if he should back away, should resist this gravity: he feels he should but can hardly remember why. Surely it's the most natural thing in the world and the most inevitable, to take one step and then two closer, to bridge the intolerable space, to shatter the emptiness between them (within him) with a touch.

Fingers touch his mouth, his lower lip, precisely and delicately where he had touched himself just moments before, and at that tiny contact the boundaries between them seem to dissolve, a spark of warmth that ripples across his body. There is a shuddering sigh, luxurious in surrender; he hears it echoed and is unsure if he is the sound or the echo, the reality or the reflection.

The point where skin meets skin feels like the only place he is alive, the only place he exists: he needs that feeling everywhere on him. Fabric gives way with a silken whisper; fingers trace long, aching lines of light down his sides, arousal like phosphorescence in the wake of a night-sailing ship. Their bodies are pressed together now, skin against skin everywhere possible, he can taste the rising frenzy of need on his lips, on his questing tongue. It must be possible to get closer than this, to be as deep inside each other as they had been, to be lost in each other.

It must be.

The embrace becomes an assault on their solitude, a bruising ecstasy, as if they could be broken like a wave upon a stone, dashed into oblivious spray together. He's no longer certain where he ends and the other begins, and at the dizzying moment of penetration he is unsure if he is inside or outside anymore. He is far past caring; he moves and is moved, feeling the friction of sweat-slick skin between them, the only reminder that they are still two people. There is breath in his mouth that is not his own, a shared groan of pleasure: he breathes it in like incense, as if he could inhale a soul, draw it into him. He wishes it could go on forever, an eternal spiral of bliss together. That there could be no limits and no end for them. "Forever," murmurs a voice in agreement, and the word is a ripple of irresistible pleasure that tips them over into completion, into hot tight fullness shuddering yielding pressure broken _yes_.

Later, he reassembles himself from fragments, lying on sheets damp with their mingled sweat, their bodies tangled where they fell.

Soon, he knows, individuality will assert itself.

He kisses himself again.

Soon he will no longer feel like half of something larger, something greater than himself.

He feels his fresh arousal within him, against him, part of him.

Perhaps he will even remember why anyone would fear this dizzying dissolution into bliss.

He strokes long and clever fingers down his body and makes himself shiver.

Soon.

 _But not yet,_ he whispers against his lips.


End file.
